09 Tawny Frogmouths - with Marian

Discover the secrets of one of Australia’s most loved birds.

This episode is all about Tawny Frogmouths - how to identify them, what they eat, where they live and how people are working together to ensure they thrive in Australia.

Dr Marian Weaving worked in the community sector for 20+ years. Entering her 40s, she decided to change tracks and follow her passion for the natural world. A Diploma in Natural Resource Management changed her life. This led to an Environmental Science degree... and then Honours... and a PhD on Tawny Frogmouths. She went on to teach at Monash University and share her love of nature with her students. Marian has loved every part of her birding journey, even the difficult bits. She has recently moved to New Zealand, where she plans on continuing her committment to conservation.

Available on your podcast app or listen below.

Links

* Marian's research - www.researchgate.net/profile/M-Weaving
* BirdLife Australia - Tawny Frogmouth - www.birdlife.org.au/bird-profile/tawny-frogmouth

• Episode Transcript - click to read

  Kirsty: This podcast was recorded on Bunurong Boonwurrung Country and on the Country of other Traditional Owners. I would like to pay my respect to Elders both past and present. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were Australia's first scientists. Their knowledge and connection to Country continues to inform our understanding of birds and of nature.

  Kirsty: Welcome to Weekend Birder. I'm your host, Kirsty Costa - I'm a teacher, science communicator and total bird nerd. Friends, I am thrilled to introduce you to Marian Weaving. Marian worked in the community sector for 20+ years, and then in her mid-forties, she had an epiphany that changed the course of her life.

  Marian: It was kind of written in the stars really. I think I was raised by a family of magpies because I never had the chance as a child to have a lie-in. We were always up at the crack of dawn to listen to the dawn chorus and my mum, well, both Mum and Dad were both absolute birders and outdoor nuts but Mum in particular was the the serious birder in our family. She didn't have a science background, she just loved birds. A lot of our household budget each week went on wild bird food, from seeds to fruit. And so I got to see lots and lots of birds in our own backyard. But when you grow up in New Zealand, holidays are spent mostly in the bush or on the beach. That's where a lot of birds are. So I was locked in to loving birds from a very early age and that carried through. And as you know, life gets in the way. A lot of my early working life was in the community development sector and I managed a lot of not for profits. My weekend activities and leisure activities were always spent in the bush or on the beach and looking at birds and being interested in vegetation and nature in general. And as I got to my forties, I started to question whether I wanted to work in the sector I'd been working in and whether I still had the fire in the belly to be involved with that particular field. An honest answer came back one day when I was reflecting on that and it was a no, and I thought, "Well, what am I going to do? Because I want to keep working". And retirement for me was not really an option. So I decided why couldn't I work at the stuff that I love doing in my leisure time, which was being out in the natural world, and I knew that I needed to have some qualifications. I had community development sector qualifications, but I knew I needed science qualifications if I wanted to work in the field. So I was really lucky. I mulled around for about two years looking for the right course, and I was so lucky to find a diploma in Natural Resource Management Course at Swinburne TAFE at Lilydale. And that was was just an amazing opportunity. I remember the first lecture on the first night of that course, I sat down with about thirty other mature age learners and I felt like I'd come home. It was a really strong, profound feeling and I knew in that moment that I was exactly where I should be at the right time. And I would encourage anybody who gets to their forties or even later in life, if you're not happy working at what you're working at (that can be an absolute misery), if you think you're going to be happier think about what's your passion. Have a really good think about what your passion, what you love doing and change direction. There's no time to sit around thinking, "Oh God, I wish I'd change in the fifties and sixties and seventies". Do it, do it. There's lifelong learning. Yeah, just do it.

  Kirsty: Marian did her PhD on the Tawny Frogmouth, and she's here to share her smarts with us.

  Marian: I find them to be a really charismatic bird. They're not a raptor with large talons and flesh tearing beaks. For me, they're a very charismatic, unique species with their own set of interesting personality traits. In Australia, there are three frogmouths, there's the Papuan Frogmouth, the Marbled Frogmouth and the Tawny. The Tawny is really common and widespread throughout Australia and in a range of habitats as well. It's a medium sized bird. It's around about 35-50 centimetres in length, with males generally heavier around about 350 grams and females 280 grams. I love their plumage and the colour, the patterning is just glorious. It's mainly a grey, mottled, silvery-grey dark-grey with white buff spots and streaking. They have this incredibly unique capacity to be literally sitting on a branch less than a metre from you and you not notice them because they adopt a cryptic pose, which is very special. They will imitate the branch that they're sitting on or the trunk of the tree that they're leaning against, and they have this capacity to stretch up their necks and slick down their feathers and look exactly like a tree branch or a tree trunk. It's an incredible. It's called a 'stick pose' where they mimic the tree branch or trunk. So when they do this and the plumage coloration and patterning, which looks like bark structure, they are just masters of camouflage. Whenever you see a Tawny and spot a Tawny, it always gives you a real surprise and naturally a delight that you've actually managed to see one of these birds because using the camouflage with their colouration is to help them to stay incognito. They are nocturnal species and therefore you can spot them during the day. But they're really, really active at night. Their prey is primarily beetles and ground dwelling insect frogs, sometimes small snakes and mice. They manage to hunt these animals at night and are what we call an 'ambush hunter'. They'll actually sit on a branch or a fence and they'll watch the ground until something crawls across it, and then they'll leap on the the the unfortunate bug or whatever, consume the pray and then fly back up again. They're incredibly patient. They'll actually sit on a fence or on a tree branch and they'll be prepared to wait for. I've watched one bird up for nearly an hour waiting for prey to move in front of it. Generally, a lot of nocturnal bird species rely on hollows for nesting and also for roosting. The difference with Tawny Frogmouths is that they don't need that. They are really happy to roost and nest in a variety of vegetation types. But it has to be a tree of course. And I've found Tawnys in native trees, I've found them in a lot of introduced species like pine and willow and poplar, and they will often use the same roost trees and the same type of tree for breeding as well. Another really unique thing about Tawnys is their capacity to breed. They breed like rabbits. To be honest, their breeding season is quite protracted from July to January, but I suspect in the right conditions that can even be extended. The other unique thing about Tawnys is that they will repeatedly breed. They will actually have a crack at the first mating in, say, July/August. And if that fails, because the nest is lost to a storm or disturbance, within about a week, they'll be back having another go. And one of the birds that I observed when I was tracking had three goes before it was successful. These birds are very flexible with their breeding season. Tawny Frogmouths have got a very distinctive call. You might have heard one in your backyard or local park and not even realized it. Tawny Frogmouth calls I think are pretty unusual. I remember even before I knew what a Tawny Frogmouth was, one evening I was standing out on the balcony of our house in Melbourne. I could hear this hum and I thought it was some sort of mechanical engineer that was in my neighbor's yard and it was this droning, repetitive, normal thing. And I thought, "Oh, Alan next door is doing some sort of lathe work". And I heard it again the next night and I thought, "Well, Alan can't be lathing0again tonight! I'll go out on the balcony and have a look around". I got my head torch out and stood on the balcony and moved the light around a bit and I illuminated this big grey bird sitting in the tree outside our balcony, I could see its chest moving and I knew that's where the hum was coming from. But it's such an unusual call, it's just not something you'd expect to have coming from a bird.

  Kirsty: Marian did her PhD research at Deakin University after discovering that she absolutely loved research.

  Marian: The PhD basically is a really big study that comprises around about four individual studies in the one big study and you look at various aspects. With the Tawny Frogmouth, I decided to look at where it was distributed in urban areas, how urban areas impacted on its space use and its home range. I wanted to see how it was adapting to urban environments and how that was impacting on their reproduction, their breeding. And then finally, I wanted to look at how the environment, the built environment in urban areas impacted on their gene flow.

  Kirsty: Marian used technology to learn a whole lot about Tawny Frogmouths.

  Marian: I put on little radio trackers weighing about eight grams, and then the real work started because I tracked these birds for nearly a year. What I did was from dawn to dusk or in reverse dusk till dawn, I would go out and track these birds to find out how they were moving, where they were moving to, and the type of purchase they were using, whether they were artificial like fences or rooflines or trees. What I found was that their space use was in some respects their home ranges were tiny. They would use a whole range of perches, from outdoor water features to people's rooflines to trellises. A remarkable number of artificial structures as well as tree branches and things like that. They like to hang out in areas where they could capture their prey. My research required me to actually capture Tawnys and I still now (even now) was not 100% comfortable about catching them. And I think as a scientist, particularly as a bird researcher or any doing any project that requires you to capture wild animals, you have to be very mindful of the impact that you are having on them. The overall big picture is that you are doing this project to advantage the species. You want to know more. Therefore, the more you know, the more you can assist in its conservation. But you also have to be mindful of the fact that you can change the behavior of the species by capturing them, tracking them and following them. And that can have a derogatory impact on them. And I think if you're a good scientist, you should all the time be questioning your methods.

  Kirsty: During her research. Marian was constantly reminded about how much people love Tawny Frogmouths.

  Marian: So why do people love Tawnys? So I think it's because they share our space and they're unexpected. Tawny Frogmouths, because they're a sedentary species (long lived), will hang out in the same area and in the same trees, year after year after year. People can look out their window. They can walk out into their yard and they can see the Tawny Frogmouth. And I think people love sharing their space with nature. I mean, there's so many studies now about how important it is to live in areas with vegetation, and we have contact with birds and other species that it really helps our wellbeing and health. It it didn't surprise me about how people were so delighted to introduce me to their Tawnys and my PhD was as much about the people who interacted with this wonderful Australian bird. I would get lots and lots of emails of people telling me that they had nests or I'd meet people in reserves who would tell me that, "Mrs so-and-so up the road has got a tawny that nests on her big eucalypt in the front yard". Every year I would get phone calls from people. One in particular - I had a phone call one day from someone who said one of their street trees has a Tawny nest. Now they were happy to give me the information and tell me where it was, but they had to be really sure that I wasn't going to interfere with this bird, that I wasn't going to stop it from breeding or upset its young. And they weren't prepared to tell me where it was until I was almost sworn to secrecy and wouldn't tell anybody else. So people really love them. I met a gentleman who put some netting under one of his trees where Tawny nests in the nesting trees were because he was really worried about the babies falling out of trees (because Tawny nests are ghastly). Their nests are only about three or four sticks, very unstable, and in high winds often babies would fall out. So he'd installed this net and the net would capture babies if they fell out. And he'd actually caught a couple and was able to put them up to a branch where Mum and Dad could actually help. People were very open and very willing to share their Tawny stories and I loved that. And I met a lot of terrific people, a lot of really great people, and I could see the value of having nature very close to you. Tawnys Frogmouths are a great ambassador, I think, for that.

  Kirsty: Marian's research revealed the importance of ensuring that we make space and cater for the needs of wildlife in our cities.

  Marian: I think as a species we should be sharing our cities and our areas that we live in with other species. I don't think it's an all or nothing situation and I think we should build cities and create open areas that can that we can occupy, but also lots of other species can occupy. I think one of the most important things we can do is create gardens and streetscapes and parks that are diverse. By diverse, I mean large trees that sustain species that need large trees like Tawny Frogmouths. With Tawnys, they need a fairly large tree to provide stability for their nests and, as a long live sedentary species, once that tree is cut down and gone they then don't have a spot for breeding. They can't breed and they'll leave the area. A lot of studies show how important large trees are, but a lot of studies also show how important it is to have a diverse amount of vegetation. That can be flowering bushes, ground covers, lots of shrubby type plants. These types of gardens and parks are really important if we want to keep bird species and other other species in our cities, that's the way we can do it. I think the other thing that's really important is to get out and actually see these animals. And in particular with birds, I think the greatest tools are our own eyes and definitely a pair of binoculars. I guess when I started looking for Tawnys, they taught me how to find them. I put aside my belief as to where I think they should be in big, large trees or in other areas. And sometimes I found them and bushes, small shrubby, woody bushes in unexpected places. So put aside your perception of where they should be and just keep your eyes open. And just look and trust your observation skills because they're your greatest tools.

  Kirsty: Many thanks to Marian Weaving for sharing her passion for bird research and her love of birdwatching. The Tawny Frogmouth recording was provided by Mike Fitzgerald on xeno-canto. Visit weekendbirder.com to access a transcript for this episode and links to social media and much more information about birdwatching.